Protesters gathered at Randwick Town Hall for a vigil before the Randwick Council Meeting following the council’s decision to fly the Israeli flag to “celebrate 75 years of Israeli independence.”
The vigil, held on 18 April, aimed to express opposition to this resolution. Contingents from USyd’s Autonomous Collective Against Racism along with other community groups were present. Following the vigil, Palestinian rights activists attended the Council meeting to urge the council to reverse its decision.
Two councillors moved an urgency motion demanding that the decision be reversed in solidarity with Palestinian community members. The motion failed, and the flag will fly on the 26th of April.
Despite this, the SRC Ethnocultural Officer said in a statement: “Palestinians, non-Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, Christians, atheists, students, workers, academics, retirees, politicians, all congregated under the Palestinian flag to show their respectful but firm opposition […]
“Palestinian have a right to exist, a right to resist and a right to sovereignty over their ancestral lands. They are being (and for 75 years have been) denied all of these by the state of Israel: so why would a local council in Australia proudly support such a state?
“Well, just as Australia was founded on the lie of ‘terra nullius’, Palestine was deemed a ‘land without a people’ by British occupiers in the 1920s and given away to the Zionist project ‘for the establishment of a Jewish homeland’, paying no regard or respect to the Indigenous people already living there.
“This ideological racism whereby native people are not seen as human beings by colonisers is a disease in so-called Australia and this disease continues to be spread pathologically by both liberal and conservative values. The subjugation of the Indigenous population in a settler-colony is the status quo, and to work against this takes decolonisation of mind, state and society.
“It takes introspection and grappling with the discomfort of benefiting from stolen land and vowing to stand for Indigenous liberation everywhere. It takes commitment to anti-colonial resistance, from Gadigal to Gaza, from Naarm to Nablus, from Boorloo to Bethlehem.
The flag will fly on 26 April. Israelis and Zionists will rejoice while Palestinians mourn.”Palestinians mourn: Randwick Town Hall Vigil to Oppose Displaying the Israeli Flag
